Networked computers are used to transmit and fetch information to and from local sources (e.g., computers used in a business) and remote sources (e.g., enterprise services offered over the Internet). To ensure privacy and security during communication between networked computers, authentication and verification mechanisms may be used. Thus, the authentication and verification mechanisms can be used to establish a trusted session between a server and client. The trusted session can be used to manage installations for network appliances so that malicious software is less likely to be installed, and to provide assurances that the latest available software is installed.
Installation of software to a network device used as a network appliance (that is, installing a network appliance) may be performed by an operator downloading an image file of a software distribution on a machine-readable medium (such as a CD ROM or DVD ROM image file), preparing the image to be used on a machine-readable medium (for example, by creating a CD ROM or DVD ROM from the image), and using the prepared medium to start the network device. However, it may be that the operator has used an old or out of date image to prepare the medium, or the operator may use a previously prepared medium that is no longer current. If later versions of the software are not compatible with the version that is installed, it may not even be possible to subsequently upgrade the network appliance. Thus, a technique is needed to ensure that the software installed on the network appliance is up to date.